


the wait is long (my dream of you does not end)

by averita



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Afterlife, Angsty but hopeful, Gen, Purgatory, got finale spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-09 08:07:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18912946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/averita/pseuds/averita
Summary: If this is death - and she’s sure it is, she remembers now, can feel the steel sliding between her ribs - it should be different.Daenerys wakes up after dying. She isn't alone.





	the wait is long (my dream of you does not end)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starbuck92](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starbuck92/gifts).



> First they did my girl Catelyn dirty, then they did her even dirtier by writing Stoneheart out, and THEN they did [starbuck92](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starbuck92)'s girl dirty AF in this last season. So. This isn't quite a fix it, and it's not quite happy, and I'm not sure how much sense it will make considering they wrote Stoneheart out of the show and book readers have the luxury of not having seen the shitshow that inspired this, but I wanted these two ladies in a room together and this is what happened.
> 
> Title from Nuala O'Faolain's "My Dream of You".

She wakes to sunlight and the scent of lemons.

 _My lemon tree_ , Daenerys thinks, but when she opens her eyes it’s nowhere to be found. There’s no house with a red door - no house at all, just open sky and rippling grass split by a clear rushing river. Silver fish fight their way upstream, glinting like gemstones when the sun catches their scales. One darts very close to the shore where Dany lies. She rolls over, scooting just close enough to dip her hand in the water and let it pass smoothly through her fingers. 

“I used to catch them,” says someone behind her, and Dany startles upright.

The woman is tall, with kind eyes as blue and endless as the sky above them. She doesn’t look at Daenerys even as she sits down next to her, keeping her eyes fixed on something in the water that Dany can’t see.

“My uncle showed us how,” the woman continues placidly. “‘The river is in your veins, child,’ he’d say. ‘She’s where we come from and where we’ll return, and in the meantime, she’ll give you all you need if you let her.’ So we weaved nets with leaves and branches and waited - you have to stand very still, that’s the trick. Still as a stone.” She pauses. “I was very good at it.” 

Dany believes it. If the woman wasn’t speaking, she could be mistaken for a statue. Not even her dress - long, blue, damp at the hem - moves with the breeze.

“‘The river is in your veins, Little Cat,’” the woman quotes again, more quietly, like she’s speaking to herself. She then turns to look at Dany. “What’s in your veins, Your Grace?”

It takes Dany a moment to answer. “Blood,” she says at last. “Fire and blood.”

“Hm,” the woman - Cat - says, sounding unsurprised. “Yes. What else?”

Dany stares at her. “What do you mean?”

Cat just looks at her, and for the first time Dany takes in the marks on her face, the gash on her throat. They look like old wounds - white and faded, an echo of past hurts - but Dany recoils anyway at the thick, ropy scar that slashes her neck. An old wound, perhaps, but not one that anyone could survive.

“I’m dead,” she realizes. “They - _he_ betrayed me.” The words are thick on her tongue but even as the knowledge settles in her chest, it doesn’t weigh as much as she thinks it should.

Cat - _Catelyn Tully_ , whispers her mind, _Catelyn Stark, she’s one of them_ \- makes a small noncommittal noise and her lip twitches, like she’s holding back laughter, or maybe tears. “Oh, child,” she sighs. “Not quite.”

“He put a blade through my heart,” Dany snaps, and she clutches at the spot through the thin silk shift she woke up in. “What would you call it? Why are you here, anyway? What am _I_ doing here?” She starts to stand, frustration rising, and yes - there’s the familiar sting of it, the burn, the _fire_ in her belly and rising, rising.

If this is death - and she’s sure it is, she remembers now, can feel the steel sliding between her ribs - it should be _different_. She has fought and screamed and bled and died for a dream that was within moments of being realized, and after all of that - after _everything_ \- this is what she gets? She turns on the spot, turns and looks all around her for anything, any _one_ besides this infuriatingly calm woman who looks so much like Jon’s sister that Dany suddenly can’t stand the sight of her.

“Where are my children?” she shouts, and it echoes through the lemon-scented air. “Where is my brother, my bear? Missandei!” Her voice breaks on the little scribe’s name, and again she turns, turns and turns and turns, searching. “My sun and stars, _where is my sun and stars_?”

The sun beats down on her, its cruel hot breath tangling her hair and darkening her cheeks, warming them so that she barely even feels the bitter tears that spill down. 

“They’re still waiting,” Catelyn Stark says softly. She’s standing now too, facing Dany but not moving any closer. “They’ll be there when it’s your time, but not yet. Not quite.” Grief shadows her face and she seems to crumple for a moment before shuttering her expression. “This is where we wait, Daenerys Stormborn.”

Dany swipes the back of her hand over her face, feeling childlike and helpless and hating herself for it. “I’ve done my waiting,” she spits, advancing towards Catelyn. She wants her to shrink back, wants her eyes to widen and her knees to bend, and with every step that doesn’t happen she grows angrier and louder. “Everyone has made me _wait_ , my entire life, and I will not do it any longer. I want what is mine!” 

She takes a deep breath, reaches deep inside for the icy stillness that has become so familiar to her, and draws it up. When she finds it - when she pulls it forth and knows her voice will be flat and deadly - she tilts her chin up and stares Catelyn down. “I have earned it,” she says. “I will take it.”

Catelyn smiles. Somehow it’s heartbreaking. “You could,” she acknowledges. “It’s your choice. You could go back and take it all. Liberate the world, and rule over the ashes. It’s not too late.” 

She closes her eyes.

Suddenly the sun is gone, the breeze grows fiercer, and Catelyn _changes_. The faded scars come to life, red and angry, and the long, glossy hair turns white and limp, barely covering the wretched skin of her scalp. She brings a mottled, rotten hand to her gaping throat and Dany stares, horrified, as she rasps, “Go back, girl, and it’s yours. He’s waiting.”

Dany shuts her eyes, taking a step backwards, and finds herself falling into thin air - falling, falling, and the wind drowns out her scream -

Drogon is warm and familiar beneath her, and she clings to his neck, sobbing. They are flying over open water, high and fast and silent but for the steady heartbeat of his wings as they rise and fall, rise and fall, thump thump thump, slicing through clouds of ash and snow. Seas and mountains, plains and tundras, the wild grass and sand where her children were born - Dany breathes it all in and weeps until she is wrung dry, weeps until Drogon lands somewhere she doesn’t recognize but knows is very far away from where they’ve been. 

It’s only when she dismounts that she sees what he’s been carrying this whole time. 

“It’s your choice,” Catelyn repeats, and Dany whirls to face her. The nightmarish spectre has vanished - Catelyn is once again lovely and serene, and her eyes are kind as she takes Dany’s hand in both of hers. “You will burn, but you’ve been reborn in fire before. You can be again.”

“And then what?” Dany whispers. She clutches Catelyn almost as tightly as she’d clung to Drogon. “If I go back - then what?”

Catelyn lifts one hand to the scar on her throat, traces it with a long white finger. “Vengeance,” she tells Dany evenly. “Fire and blood and the Seven Kingdoms too, if you like. They’re yours if you want them. You’ve proven that.”

Dany lets go of Catelyn and stumbles towards Drogon, who is nuzzling the pale form on the ground. She reaches for him, strokes his snout and presses her forehead to it, but her dragon takes no notice even as her tears wet his scales. “My sweet boy,” she murmurs, “my sweet Drogon, I’m so sorry…”

 _There’s nothing more dangerous than a Targaryen alone in the world_ , she thinks. Jon’s face flashes in her mind, but he’s not alone - not truly, not so long as his cousins (his siblings, she’s forced to admit) survive. 

But Drogon…

“What happened to you?” Dany demands, turning back to Catelyn but keeping her hand on Drogon’s neck. “Why are you here?”

Catelyn touches her own throat again, this time with trembling fingers. “My time came,” she says, sounding more tired than Dany has ever heard a person sound. “I was ready. I thought, like you, that I’d have my family back. My Ned, my boys…” She closes her eyes for a long moment, and when she opens them again, they’re wet. “My family was waiting, just like yours. But I didn’t have a choice when I was taken from them again. Do not talk to me about waiting, child. Even in death, I am left waiting.”

Drogon curls himself around the prone body. Dany climbs, as she has so many times before, to sit on his back and hold him as close as she can. He feels colder than usual, but smells the same, and part of her thinks she could sit here forever - not waiting, just resting.

She wants to _rest_.

“I want to rest,” she says out loud. “I want to go home.”

Where is home? The air smells like lemons again, and Drogon whines, a low keening sound, as he brings his face close to his mother’s body. Dany can feel the vibration in his chest, and he’s no longer cold. _Home_ , Dany thinks, open skies and great grass seas, warm calloused hands and gentle voices. _Home_ , and she slips from the dragon’s back as he rears up and breathes a slow, shuddering breath that engulfs the corpse, _home_ \- 

Through the smoke and ash, she sees a red door.

“Choose,” says Catelyn Stark. Her figure is distorted now, and Dany can’t tell if it’s the fire or something else; her voice is harsher, too, closer to the terrible rasp from before. “Fighting, or what you’ve been fighting for.” 

Dany approaches the door, reaches out with shaking fingers to touch the shining gold knob. Before she turns it, she looks over her shoulder towards where Catelyn stands. “Why are you here?” she asks once again, quietly now, curious. “What are you waiting for?”

The scars on Catelyn’s face seem to vanish for a moment, leaving just tear tracks in their place. “Mercy,” she answers simply, and then she is gone all together.

 _Choose_ , her voice echoes.

With a great wrenching cry Drogon launches into the sky, and Dany steps through the red door.


End file.
